The chief executive of Europe’s largest trading platform has urged the European Commission to take on the incumbent bourses regarding the price of trading data.

Mark Hemsley

Mark Hemsley’s comments reflect growing frustration over the industry’s failure to build a trading tape of stock prices to increase transparency for investors.

Speaking during an event organised by Worldwide Business Research last week Hemsley, from Bats Chi-X Europe, said claims that poor data standards have frustrated efforts to build a tape are a “smokescreen”.

He told a Commission official: “The key reason we have no tape is the price of exchange data. You have to take that on – whether it’s through DG [director general] competition or something else.” Hemsley said he would “certainly” provide evidence to a competition investigation.

On the sidelines of the conference, he added: “Technical standards are being resolved. The real obstacle is related to commercial interests. Market data is a significant revenue line for the traditional exchanges and understandably they want to protect that.”

Jasper Jorritsma, a policy officer at the Commission, said the institution’s preference “is to give the market an opportunity to prove it can come up with a commercial solution”.

The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive of 2007 fragmented trading across multiple venues. The industry agrees on the importance of building a trading tape but efforts to create one have repeatedly faltered.